Your Mental Sorbet: Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence, that request came from his wife.

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.

This is The Odd Couple Opening Theme from Season II

Here are some Odd Couple Outtakes. The video opens with Jack Klugman explaining the story behind the Bloopers and the shows opening narration.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Ray Charles and Jackie Mason SIng the Blues on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.

Ray Charles and Jackie Mason on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Season 3.

Why does it have to take two geniuses meeting to convey the simple message that we are all in this together?


Stay Tuned and Shalom




Tony Figueroa

This week in Television History: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour canceled

You can hear me discuss This week in TelevisionHistory on the TV CONFIDENTIAL with Ed Robertson andFrankie Montiforte Podcast at KSAV.org or go to TV CONFIDENTIAL Apr. 7 edition, Hour 1: ER, Life on Mars and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.

Before I get to this weeks historical installment I want to first acknowledge one of many historical milestones that led to what we now call Television. Please note that my above disclaimer rings especially true.

April 7, 1927
The first simultaneous telecast of image and sound takes place on April 7th 1927. Then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover read a speech in Washington, D.C., that was transmitted to the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City. The New York audience saw and heard a tiny televised image of Hoover that was less than 3 square inches.


April 4, 1969
The CBS Television Network fired The Smothers Brothers because the brothers failed to submit an episode of the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to network executives before its broadcast.

The network claimed the second to last show of the season was turned in late, and claimed that their tardiness constituted a breach of contract justifying their dropping of the series. The network ultimately refused to run the episode anyway because they said it "would be considered irreverent and offensive by a large segment of our audience". That episode is on the Smothers Brothers: The Best of Season 3 DVD.

The variety show was well known for its censorship battles with the network. The network executives often objected to the brothers' selection of controversial, outspoken, left wing, and antiwar guests, including:
Pete Seeger, who had been invited to appear on the Smothers' second season premiere to sing his anti-war song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” Seeger would later appear on the show and sang that song.
Harry Belafonte was scheduled to do a calypso song called "Don't Stop the Carnival" with images from the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention behind him. The Song was cut and the time was sold to the Nixon campaign but can now be seen on the season 3 DVD.
Joan Baez wanted to dedicate a song to her draft-resisting husband who was about to go to prison for his stance. The dedication to her husband made the air but the reason for the dedication did not.
Dr. Benjamin Spock, noted baby doctor and anti-war activist, was prevented from appearing as a guest of the show because, according to the network, he was a "convicted felon."

Under the category of irreverent and offensive, we have:
David Steinberg’s satirical sermonettes caused controversy for being sacrilegious. His second sermonette was in the episode that never aired.
Leigh French created the recurring hippie character, Goldie O'Keefe, whose parody of afternoon advice shows for housewives, "Share a Little Tea with Goldie," was actually one long celebration of mind-altering drugs. (Tea" was a counter culture code word for marijuana, but the CBS censors seemed to be unaware of the connection). Goldie would open her sketches with, "Hi(gh)– and glad of it!"
Elaine May wrote a skit about censorship that featured Tom and Elaine who playing motion picture censors trying to find a more acceptable substitution for unacceptable dialogue. The skit ended up being censored.

Tom and Dick Smothers assembled the old Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour gang in February 1988 for a 20th reunion special on CBS. Now the network wanted the brothers and company to be edgy and controversial but no one associated with the show was interested. After all when the establishment tells you something is cool... It's no longer cool.

In 1968 when it came time to submit the names of the writers for Emmy considerations, Tom refused to include his name for fear that he had become too controversial and it would hurt the show’s chances of winning. The show won the Emmy for outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy Variety that year.

Almost 40 Years later
(Sunday, September 21st 2008) during the live television broadcast of the 60th Annual Emmy Awards (YouTube - Steve Martin Tommy Smothers Emmy 2008), Tom Smothers received an Emmy acknowledging his contributions as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Steve Martin, who was one of the Emmy winning writers on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, presented Tom with a commemorative Emmy acknowledging his role in the writing of a variety show. Television Academy Honors Tom Smothers With Commemorative Emmy

In October of this year the book "Dangerously Funny: the Uncensored History of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" by David Bianculli will be published by Touchstone. Visit their website: http://www.tvworthwatching.com/

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

PS: I wrote this article on the Smothers Brothers back on July 28th 2005 O Brothers, Where Art Thou?

Hogan's Heroes on DVD.

Since many of my favorite shows are on hiatus, I have been enjoying watching classic TV shows on DVD. I am in the middle of watching the third season of Hogan's Heroes. I enjoy watching the show. One reason is that I am a big fan of WWII comedies. I collect movies like Operation Petticoat, Stalag 17, and Father Goose. I enjoy seeing Bugs Bunny, Popeye, and the Three Stooges fight the enemy. And I would like to add television shows like McHale's Navy, and Operation Petticoat to my collection.

Hogan’s Heroes has suffered much more criticism than most sitcoms from that time period (i.e. Gilligan's Island or Get Smart). I would like to address this criticism with the help of Hogan's Heroes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and the article
Hogan’s Heroes and the Holocaust: by Leslie Campbell Rampey, Ph.D.

Some people dismiss Hogan’s Heroes as stupid because the German characters spoke English to each other (This was addressed in the Pilot on the Season One DVD). When Martians speak English to each other, the audience suspends their disbelief, so why not with Germans. The bigger criticism was the depiction of the Germans as funny, incompetent or stupid, and trivializing the evil of the Nazis or the Holocaust. We can’t credibly judge a forty plus year old TV show by modern standards of good taste and political correctness. I also have never heard these critics mention the stars of the show or the characters they played.

Werner Klemperer (Colonel Wilhelm Klink) and his family fled Germany to Austria and then to the United States in order to escape the Nazi regime. He served during World War II in the U.S. Army. His TV Character, Col. Klink was a Luftwaffe officer (historically they were not Nazis). Klink was never mentioned as a formal member of the Nazi Party, and was portrayed as a bumbling bureaucrat, not as a bad guy. It is important to note that historically the Luftwaffe stalags provided the best treatment of Allied prisoners of war. Klemperer was once asked how could he play a Nazi? His answer was, "I am an actor by profession. If you can play Richard the Third, you can play a Nazi". (On the season two DVD Klemperer discussed this in an interview on The Pat Sajak Show)

John Banner (Sergeant Hans Schultz) was in a concentration camp, then fled to the United States. His TV Character, Sergeant Schultz, is a basically good-hearted man who would rather not report the prisoner’s activities, saying, "I see nothing! Nothing!" When Banner was asked how could he play a Nazi? He answered "Who can play Nazis better than us Jews?"

Leon Askin (General Albert Burkhalter) was beaten by the Gestapo and sent to a French internment camp before escaping to the U.S. via France. When the U.S. entered WWII, Askin joined the U.S. Army. While serving he learned that his parents had been killed at an extermination camp. I believe that Col. Klink and Sergeant Schultz were ignorant to what was happening in the death camps, but Gen. Burkhalter and Major Hochstetter (Howard Caine) had to have known.

Robert Clary (Corporal Louis LeBeau) was taken from his Paris home at the age of 16 and spent the next three years in various concentration camps, finally being liberated from Buchenwald. It wasn’t until 1980 that Clary decided to speak of his experiences at the Simon Wiesenthal Center because of the increased incidences of anti-Semitism and the rise of the "revisionist" historians who deny that the Holocaust took place. Of course, the first thing they want to know is, "’How could you have done Hogan’s Heroes, which dealt with Nazism?’" Clary’s answer is that is, that he’s an actor who played a character who never existed in real life. Clary is careful, however, to make some additional distinctions. Despite the hardships he acknowledges that POWs experienced, "They were not killed, they were not sent to gas chambers".

These actors proved that comedy is truly tragedy plus time and their characters were more than just funny Nazis. Let’s not forget that the show has had a long life in syndication. Fans love the show, and like Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes have spawned a peculiar literary genre known as fan fiction (Stories or sometimes whole novels produced by fans who borrow the characters, setting, and basic premise of a TV series as a taking-off point and create entirely new plots). Hogan's Heroes Fan Fiction. Some of this Fan Fiction involves the Holocaust in their story lines. The show had talented actors, writers and directors. I guess I like WWII comedies, like Hogan’s Heroes, because it proves that we can find humor anywhere even in the middle of the worst of what humanity has to offer. If you like the show go check out the DVD if not read a book. These Hogan’s Heroes critics who confuse of the POW camps with a concentration/death camps speaks more about the quality of the general public’s level of historical awareness than the quality of what William Shatner would call, "Just a TV show!" Sadly I fear that many of those who confuse a POW camp with a concentration/death camp may think that all Germans are Nazis too. There were many German characters on Hogan’s Heroes who were good guys.

To quote John Banner, "I see Schultz as the representative of some kind of good in any generation".

Stay Tuned


Tony Figueroa

Buffalo Bill on DVD. (Click PODCAST)

As many of you know I love sitcoms. In the past I’ve talked about the importance of good writing, good acting, taking risks, being edgy, comedy coming from the situation and knowing everything you need to know about the show from it's pilot. I am surprised, almost embarrassed even that I never mentioned Buffalo Bill. This brilliant but sadly short lived sitcom aired from 1983 to 1984 and stared Dabney Coleman as Bill Bittinger, a local talk show host in Buffalo NY.

I remember back in 1983 NBC promoted the show by saying, Buffalo Bill makes "J.R. Ewing look like a Boy Scout" That was enough to make me want to watch the show. The shows opening told you that the title character was a sleazy guy with a good public image. The pilot actually delivered on the network's promise (although I saw Bill more as a white collar Archie Bunker without the moral high ground). Bill was truly the man you loved to hate. The show did not last long, a real shame because I have never met anyone who did not like the show. I used to say that the show was ahead of its time. I've since had to amend that statement because 22 years later that time has still not come.

When I found out that Buffalo Bill was coming out on DVD I went to the store and got the last copy. I had to wait a few weeks to watch the DVD because I was watching the new fall shows, the returning shows and besides I HAVE A LIFE! Both my wife and I have a favorite episode, #13 Titled: Hit the Road, Newdell. In this episode the racist Bill fires Newdell (Charles Robinson) then has a nightmare where he is persecuted by a roomful of African Americans while lip syncing Ray Charles’ Hit the Road Jack. For legal reasons (music rights) the nightmare scene was cut. Why was there not any mention of that on the DVD case? That episode was one of the reasons why I bought the DVD in the first place. I also wish the DVD had some extras like interviews with the shows actors and writers. They must have some great stories. Maybe we will see that on TV Land Confidential.

To quote Bill Bittinger, "Be good to yourself and be good to Buffalo".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa